Knox’s first female mayor to women: Keep them ‘scratching’

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero urges women to realize the power they hold, claim it — and make a difference in the world around them.

by Donna Smith/Staff

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero urges women to realize the power they hold, claim it — and make a difference in the world around them.

“We all have the power and responsibility to make the change we desire,” Rogero told the crowd gathered Friday at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Pollard Technology Conference Center.

The many women listening, and a few men, were attending the day-long International Women’s Day Conference in Oak Ridge.

A common way of giving up power is to think you don’t have any, Rogero said. She reminded the women that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” citing the fact that the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote was approved when legislator Harry Thomas Burn Sr. voted in favor of the measure after reading a letter urging such action by his mother, a Tennessean.

Rogero is the first woman mayor of Knoxville, elected in 2011, and the only woman ever elected mayor in Tennessee’s four largest cities. Her life has included working with migrant farm workers in California, along with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers in the 1970s, and women coal miners in Kentucky.

Rogero pointed out the Oak Ridge ties to her political career and the women miners.

In the 1970s, it was women lawyers in Oak Ridge — Oak Ridger Jo Ann Garrett mentioned local attorney Dorothy Stuhlburg as being one of them — who wanted to inspect the underground coal mines but were stopped by the mining companies because superstition held that allowing women into coal mines was bad luck and would lead to disaster. The women returned to their offices and found that those coal companies were selling to the federal utility TVA and that Kentucky women were being prohibited from working in those mines — which paid more than other jobs in their area. The Oak Ridge women lawyers began the effort that led to the Kentucky women being allowed to work in the mines.

In regards to her political career, Rogero said when she moved to Knoxville she began exploring how to run for office and went to the library. She found a book called “See Jane, See Jane Run, See Jane Run For Office,” by Shirley Hendrix of the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge, which provided her the how-to information.

When she first ran for office, she said, her opponent didn’t consider her a serious threat and would introduce her to people, commenting on how pretty she was. She said she’d try to act that much prettier — all the while working to get elected and organizing her campaign.

She won, beating out the 24-year commission veteran.

“When being a woman is used against you, just use it to your advantage,” Rogero said. In response to a question, she said she wished more young women were getting into politics. In addition to area women, Friday’s conference was attended by a large group of young women from the Women’s Center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Rogero recommended the book, “Composing a Future Life: The Age of Active Wisdom,” by Mary Catherine Bateson, the daughter of anthropologist Margaret Mead.

“Life is an improvisational art form, she says,” Rogero cited, and the peaks and valleys are part of the rich tapestry we weave on the way to empowerment and wisdom.

Rogero told of Lindy Boggs, the U.S. congresswoman whose actions helped stop women from being discriminated against from getting home mortgages because of their gender and martial status. The men involved in writing the law were just not aware of the discrimination. During an anti-slavery talk, Rogero said, an older white man told former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth that he didn’t pay her anymore mind than he would a flea bite. Sojourner replied: “Perhaps not, but Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”